The Innovation School of Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA) began preparations in 2020. Established within the framework of GAFA’s “one university, three campuses” strategy, it is a new type of school aimed at aligning with major national development strategies, supporting industrial upgrading in the Greater Bay Area, and leading the future of global design education.

Upholding the vision of being rooted in the Greater Bay Area, oriented toward the world, and focused on the future, the Bay Area Innovation School has developed a comprehensive teaching system. It implements an all-encompassing model for cultivating innovative talent that integrates value shaping, knowledge transmission, and capability development. The school offers a fully integrated pathway from undergraduate to postgraduate to doctoral levels, and seamlessly connects teaching, research, and practice, thereby realizing its mission of integrating industry and education, science and education, and art and technology.

The school comprises three major academic clusters and six programs:

• Intelligent System Cluster (Intelligent Interaction Design, Creative Design and Intelligent Engineering)

• Digital Humanities Cluster (Art and Design, Art and Science)

• Art and Technology Cluster (Digital Arts Design, Sci-Tech Art)

These clusters emphasize the development of foundational, emerging, and interdisciplinary disciplines through a disciplinary cluster approach. The school embraces new concepts from emerging liberal arts, engineering, and design disciplines, and actively explores the mechanisms of integration between natural sciences and the humanities.

Through design education, the school is committed to fusing art, technology, engineering, and media; promoting interdisciplinary collaboration; breaking down boundaries between majors; and restructuring the academic knowledge framework. Students are encouraged to pursue cross-disciplinary learning across various fields of study.